The ubiquitous nature of computing devices has facilitated ever increasing amounts of time that users spend interacting with, and modifying, their computing devices. Such modifications include the installation of software application programs that enable users to perform useful tasks on their computing devices. Such modifications also include changes to various settings, including settings specific to a single application program or operating system of the computing device, and settings that are more universally applied across some or all of the application programs and the operating system. For example, users can customize the display of text on their computing device, the color schemes utilized in the visual display presented by the computing device, the quantity of material automatically saved by the computing device, the locations of various files on the computing device, and other such settings. Additionally, users can generate content on the computing device that can be either saved in separate files, or can be incorporated into various application programs. For example, users can add one or more bookmarked locations to a web browser application program or can add one or more contacts to an email application program.
When a user attempts to change the operating system of their computing device, such as by upgrading to a newer version of that operating system, by reinstalling the same version of the operating system, or by utilizing the same, or different, version of the operating system on a new computing device, many of these modifications that the user made to make their interactions with the computing device more convenient can be lost. Because an operating system is, by definition, the basis upon which all other software applications rely in their interactions with the computing device, changing the operating system of a computing device without affecting any of the software application programs installed thereon is analogous to attempting to change a tablecloth after the table has already been set for a multi-course meal. As such, traditionally, users performing an operating system change have been instructed to install the new operating system on an empty storage device and manually transfer all of their settings to the new operating system as they manually installed the software application programs that were installed on the prior operating system.
Systems designed to aid in operating system changes, such as in the installation of a new operating system, often attempt to merely replace files that were associated with a prior operating system. As an initial matter, such a strategy may only preserve application program settings and user modifications to the extent that the new operating system being installed does not differ, in a material way, from the prior operating system. Operating system preferences and user modifications may still not be retained. Furthermore, the exchanging of operating system files can result in various application software incompatibilities with the new operating system, or other similar undesired effects.